Can I name a second heir to inherit my Israeli estate after the first heir dies?

A widower in Toronto owns an apartment in Jerusalem and wants his second wife to live in it for the rest of her life, but he wants the flat to pass to his children from his first marriage when she dies, not to her family. Israeli law has a specific tool for exactly this, and it is one of the most misunderstood provisions in the Succession Law.

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Detailed Answer

The mechanism is the "heir after heir" arrangement (yoresh acharei yoresh, יורש אחרי יורש) under Section 42 of the Succession Law 1965. You name a first heir who inherits on your death, and a second heir who inherits whatever is left of that property when the first heir dies, or on an earlier date or upon an event you specify in the will. During their lifetime the first heir is treated as a full owner: they may live in the property, rent it, and even sell it, and they are not obliged to preserve it for the second heir unless your will says so. What the first heir cannot do, under Section 42(b), is dispose of the property by their own will. Any gift the first heir tries to make of the inheritance is valid only if you permitted gifts in your will; if not, it is void, which protects the second heir's eventual share. If the second heir has died or renounces, or none of the conditions are met, the property simply stays with the first heir's estate.

Two points trip people up. First, Section 42 is limited to one round of succession beyond the first heir, so you cannot chain an indefinite line of heirs the way a trust would; a direction to a third heir after the second generally has no effect. Second, this is not the same as leaving someone a mere life interest with the remainder held in trust. The first heir really does own the asset and can consume it, so if your goal is to guarantee the children receive the apartment intact, you should restrict the first heir's power to sell or gift it expressly in the will, and consider whether a note should be registered against the title at the Land Registry (Tabu) to warn buyers. A carefully drafted restriction is what turns a loose intention into an enforceable one.

In Practice: Under Section 42 of the Succession Law 1965 you may name a first heir and a second heir, but no valid heir beyond the second, and Section 42(b) voids any attempt by the first heir to pass the asset on by their own will unless you allowed gifts. The arrangement is proved by a will execution order (tzav kiyum tzava'a) from the Inheritance Registrar (Rasham HaYerushot), on an application costing about NIS 516 plus roughly NIS 68 for the required newspaper notice, and an uncontested order issues in about three to six weeks.

For a non-resident this needs deliberate drafting, not a translated foreign template. The will itself should meet an Israeli form, most reliably a witnessed will signed before two witnesses or a will signed before an authority such as an Israeli notary or consul abroad, so the Inheritance Registrar does not have to rely on foreign-law validity under Section 137. If your first heir lives in Israel and your second heirs are your children abroad, the practical friction comes later: the children will need apostilled identity and status documents to prove their entitlement when the first heir dies, sometimes decades after the will was written. Whether an Israeli will should sit alongside your home-country will, and how the two interact, is covered in our answer on whether an Israeli will must be in Hebrew.

When to Consult a Lawyer

• You want to give a surviving spouse the use of an Israeli property but guarantee it reaches your children. The first heir's default power to sell or spend the asset must be restricted in writing, or your intention will not hold.
• Your foreign will already contains a trust or life-interest clause. That structure does not map cleanly onto Section 42, and copying it across risks a clause that an Israeli court reads as void or as an outright gift to the first heir.
• The first heir and the second heirs are in different countries or on poor terms. Disputes over what the first heir may sell are common, and a note registered at the Land Registry early prevents a good-faith buyer from defeating the second heir's claim.

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Speak With an Israeli Attorney

A successive-heir clause is powerful but unforgiving of loose drafting, and the same words that work in a foreign will can collapse under Section 42. We draft the Israeli will to the correct form, calibrate what the first heir may and may not do with the property, and register protective notices so the second heirs actually receive what you intended.

Contact us for a confidential initial consultation.